0 Fly brains

Success of the week: finally secured an Honours project! This is almost as tough is seeking out a job. For the next year or so, I will be making lots of mutant flies, dissecting fly brains and taking beautiful confocal images of fly brains. I'll be working on the regulation of Notch signaling pathway in Drosophila neuroblasts, which at this stage the research is still very preliminary. I expect a very challenging task ahead, considering that genetics has never been my forte (urgh, genetic crosses!).But you gotta do what you gotta do, so I shall and will have to work doubly hard to understand all those Mendelian stuff, which I usually skim through in the past.

Apart from Honours, I have been going back to school for another reason - free money! I signed up for an experiment in behavioral economics where you just had to answer some math questions and you get rewarded based on the number of questions you got correct. The first round, I earned $15 in just 1 hour. Then I got called back for round two (today). The experiment was conducted in a different format (I won't go into the details) but I walked away with $7.50 only. I shouldn't become too greedy eh.

Aaaannd, I made my first ever yeasted (100% wholemeal spelt) bread today, based on Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads! Spelt is lower in gluten than normal wheat so naturally there was some difficulty with the dough texture. It often felt too slippery and weak. Moreover, Singapore's humidity (is it's been extra humid these few days) makes it even more difficult to control the yeast activity. The final texture ended up a bit gummy, which is typical of low gluten/gluten-free breads. Moreover, the crumbs were not evenly distributed, being denser near the bottom but airier at the top. I shall do a separate post on bread making with a more detailed analysis and troubleshooting guide, tomorrow perhaps?